- ‘The College Library 
By John Cotton Dana “+, 7% 
Librarian Newark, N. J., Free Public PMs 


This article appeared in THE FREEMAN on February 21, 1923. 
That THE FREEMAN found it worthy of publication gave me great 
pleasure; for that journal is well printed, which is much; is well written, 
which 1s more; is disturbingly radical in tts utterances, which is much 
more; and enlivens its opinions with humor, which is best of al!. In 
the article here reprinted with THE FREEMAN’S consent, I make the 
assertion that the Trustees, presidents and faculties of nearly all colleges 
and universities, for both sexes, have thus far neglected to use as they 
might the most important tool at their hands,—their libraries. With 
them they could give every professor and every student the opportunity 
to see, to handle and to use, in home, office, room or class the books, 
journals, proceedings, pamphlets and maps which are being widely read 
iit and widely discussed and are helpmg to form opinion and to settle 
Hy problems and are adding to the mterests and pleasures of the alert and 
the intelligent. 

To give one definite suggestion: Let every professor receive fre- 
quent notes of additions to the college library and receive, on his request, 
frequent deliveries of what he asks to see, at his home or his class 


a burden which we must each carry if we are to keep 


rooms, 


THE FREEMAN’S address is 116 W. 13th St., 
Its price is $6.00 per year; single numbers 15 cents. 


WE read more to-cay than ever before. But in relation 
| to the burden that life now puts upon us, we read 
| less than ever, while we need to read far more. The 


the social organism going has been increased beyond 
our power to endure, unless we use, to a far greater 
degree than we now do, the experience, the knowledge, 
the imagination of the world’s best minds. Briefly, 
| the people are about to try to rule themseives, and are 
not learning how. 

This failure to learn from print is shown in one of 
i its most depressing phases in the attitude of our pro- 
i fessional teachers towards printed things. By pro- 
fessional teachers I mean all who engage in definite 
| educational work with groups or classes of students ; 
and I am concerned here almost solely with those who 
are thus engaged in colleges and universities. Of the 
secondary schools, I merely remark that books to be 
used to broaden the curriculum by way of collateral 
reading and reference, began to come into use hardly 
more than a generation ago; and it is scarcely a decade | 


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since public high schools began to adopt the custom 
of having good libraries and skilled librarians for their 
pupils and instructors. 

Before citing facts which seem to show that college 
libraries are neglected, it is well to note the tendency 
of all formal education to turn aside from the use of 
print-in-general as an aid to thinking and wisdom. I 
refer to the recent nation-wide movement for making 
formal education as much as possible of the type that 
enthusiasts are pleased to call vocational. Specifically, 
it means the use of a large part of a city’s school- 
appropriation for the erection, equipment and mainte- 
nance of buildings which are far more expensive to 
set up and maintain than are schools wherein education 
is purveyed with the aid only of brains and print; and 
it means, in colleges and universities, the setting up 
of like plants, these plants being, in both cases, designed 
to lead students at the earliest possible moment towards 
the doing of those things that promise skill in some 
narrow and special technique. This movement in both 
school and college gets its strength largely from the 


reasonable claim made for it that this method will | 


more quickly lift students to money-making positions 
than will the method of using print-at-large. All 
educational work of this vocationahnature tends inevit- 
ably to the neglect of books and ‘libraries. 

Our country is industrial\in' every fibre of its being. 
The art of making things or moving things and thereby 
making money, is seen continually, in ten thousand 
forms, by wellnigh every child from his earliest infancy. 
The vast majority of boys not only see but take part in 
this industrialism. Now, in order that they may, 
when they come of age and have some influence in 
the management of the social organism, be equipped 
to bear a citizen’s burdens, we put them in school in 
the hope that they may there get, through a study of 
print, such a view of their world and of its problems 
in small part at least, as has been granted to the best 
minds the world has produced. 

The influence of cur passion for industrialism as it 
manifests itself in our daily life, narrowing as it 
inevitably does the outlook on social problems, is being 
constantly exerted on all normal persons from the age 
of six. From six to fourteen, particularly, children 
are in it and of it and live it. They are getting the 
most deadly practical, the most non-bookish, the most 
vocational of all possible vocational-industrial trainings, 
in that they are every moment living in, and partaking 
of, the industrial life that surrounds them. With 
difficulty and at some expense we prepare for them 
a formal educational apparatus to be used, over and 
above the technique of reading, in giving them contact 
with the wisdom that man has gathered in the last 
few thousand years, and such practice in thinking as 
may make them a little better equipped to help, as 
they mature, in keeping society in a healthful condition. 

That statement, brief as it is, seems to suggest the 
fundamental purpose of formal education. Consider, 
now, the relative power of the two influences—life, and 
the education of the schools. The former is at work 
every waking day of fifteen hours, from the first to 
the fourteenth year of a child’s life, a total of about 
75,000 hours. Between the ages of six and fourteen, 
American children have 45,000 hours of practical, 
vocational, industrial training simply through living 
in an industrial environment; an environment of 
prodigious power to mould and fashion the spirit to 
the current ideal of material success. Not quite 45,000 
hours, to be sure; for we must subtract the hours 
during which they are subjected to the formal educa- 
tion-for-wisdom which our schools administer. These 
hours of cther-worldly training are few indeed; they 
number for the average child less than 7000 in eight 
years of school. Of these few hours it is the aim of 
the vocational enthusiasts to take away as many as 


possible and use them in strengthening the occupational | 


and business and money-making training which every- 
day life in America seems to supply, out of school, in 
overflowing abundance. 

The children who go on through the high school 
and the college give to school life about the same 
percentage of their waking hours as does the child 
who leaves school at fourteen. Each year now the 
pressure on the student increases, by reason of the 
tendency to make high school and college courses more 
practical and nearer to our industrial life, to surrender 
the few hours set apart for acquiring good sense and 
power of thought to that practical business-training 
which in any event inevitably fills more than seven- 
eighths of his waking life. 

So much for an indictment of present-day practical 
education on what some may call a priors grounds. 
Consider now certain facts which give a basis for that 
indictment. Few will deny that what men have learned 
by experience and observation, have pondered carefully 
and have then set down in writing, is the one posses- 
sion above all others which we should study and use. 
The printed page is man’s most precious treasure and 
his most useful aid. This heritage of mankind includes 
the visions of the poets as well as the formule of the 
chemists, the record of a civilization’s decay as well 
as the record of men of genius, and the record of the 
quality of languages of the past as well as that of the 
languages of to-day. 

The supreme importance of the collection and pres- 
ervation of the records of man’s deeds and thoughts, 
and of so arranging them that they may be conven- 
iently used, does not need proof, for it is universally 
admitted. It is universally admitted, also, that they 
should be read and studied. That this latter admissior 
is in large degree only a theory with the institutions ot 
higher learning, is shown by the persistence with which 
their libraries are neglected. 

It is true that many costly buildings have been 
erected to house college libraries; that collections of 
books of great size and value are housed in these 
buildings ; that ample and comfortable rooms are sup- 
plied in many of them, in which scores of students 
may consult and read books and other printed things; 
that in them are set apart hundreds of volumes to the 
reading of which students are directed, and even com- 
pelled, by their instructors; that students and profes- 
sors alike may take to their rooms and their homes 
such books as they wish to use; and that the total 
annual cost of thus providing easy and comfortable 
access to the written words of the world’s best minds 
is So great as to prove conclusively that college libraries 
are not neglected. 

To all this it may be said that the current tendency 
in college buildings is to the- grandiose. On the 
accepted theory that a collection of books is the most 


important part of the equipment of a college, the 
building in which the collection is housed is put up, 
if possible, in the grandiose manner and usually looks 
as if it cost a great deal of money. Having the grand 
and expensive-looking library-building, trustees, faculty 
and alumni easily persuade themselves that they have 
done enough for their college’s most important labora- 
tory, and pay little heed to the extent and quality of 
the use made of its contents. A few years ago, although 
libraries were generally admitted to be the most import- 
ant instruments of education that colleges can possess, 
the persons who presided over and directed those 
instruments were, save in rare instances, not members 
of faculties, and were quite commonly looked upon as 
a slightly superior order of clerks. That fact alone 
shows how, in the mechanics of college education, the 
collections which were, in theory, looked on with so 
much reverence and were so impressively and expen- 
sively housed, were really regarded. It inevitably 
followed that the laboratories of books, presided over 
by inferiors, took an inferior place. 

To this, many learned professors will say at once 
that, as they know the literature of their own subjects 
they need only a messenger at their book-warehouse 
who can buy what they tell him to buy, and can find 
in the warehouse the books they ask for—a clerk’s 
job, surely! But the whole development of the econ- 
omy of libraries in the past fifty years, of which the 
professors know little or nothing, gives ample proof 
that they are quite in the wrong. 

College libraries are not only often richly housed; 
they are, as stated, often rich in books; and often too 
rich. The worth of a library lies in the use made of 
it. Its building and the size of its collections may 
easily so obfuscate its possessors as to make them 
believe that, if a place so grand and a collection so 
great is at hand, they must of course be using it in 
a grand manner and to the great advantage of educa- 
tion; while in fact they scarcely touch its riches and 
scarcely feel its power. 

Students can, it is true, go to college libraries, and 
can there read in some degree of comfort the books 
they choose and the books that are chosen for them 
by their several instructors—and that is well. They 
may also take to their rooms a few books, and in some 
cases may take, even for several days, the special books 
to which they are directed—and that is also well. But 
here is a preamble, followed by a few questions, the 
answers to which amply demonstrate the truth of my 
thesis that college libraries are neglected. 

The size, grandeur and cost of college library-build- 
ings has helped to strengthen the doctrine, inherited 
from the days when books were few and rare, and 
every library naturally acquired all it could and kept 
religiously all it acquired, that the collection within 


so large a building should be of the largest possible 
size and of the widest possible range. This theory 
that the college library should be large and wide- 
ranging, and should’ never discard anything it may 
acquire, is not only strengthened by the size and cost 
of its home, but has, in turn, héiped to strengthen the 
theory that its home should be large in order that it 
might hold all possible acquisitions, and should be 
ernate in order that it might honour the rare and 
precious things it contains. There has also prevailed 
the theory that a magnificent marble building is an 
outward symbol of the inward reverence which trustees, 
faculty and alumni have for the wisdom lying in the 
books within; while the honour, in fact, goes to archi- 
tects, donors, and college presidents and trustees. The 
wisdom of books can be honoured truly only by using 
them skilfully and lavishly to foster further wisdom. 

The desire for quantity of print and for rarity of 
print, can be satisfied only by the acquisition of print. 
College libraries have quite generally spent freely on 
acquisition, wishing to push their collections on 
towards completeness. They have felt obliged also 
to give space and care to gifts of books. They have 
done all this, each with no regard to like activity of 
acquisition by other libraries, until now we discover 
that, while many college libraries are large and wide 
ranging, and being so, are inevitably expensive to 
maintain; nevertheless in all of them combined the 
resources in printed records of man’s achievement are 
iamentably small. } 

These libraries have failed to consider the value to 
scholars of such a fullness of book-riches as could 
have been attained by joint and selective effort in the 
acquisition of books; they have thought it of far more 
importance than it really is, to have close at hand in 
each college library an attempt, no matter how feeble, 
at a collection for all possible scholars. In doing this 
they have largely failed to carry on that type of work 
for their instructors and students which alone would 
have relieved them of the charge of neglecting their 
libraries. I refer to that type of service which is 
furnished by our best public libraries. 

I recently sent to seventy-one college libraries six 
short questions, and received answers from forty-six 
of them. The questions asked, in effect, if easy access 
(for use at home or in the class-room) to the best of 
recent books, including of course much-discussed 
works in all fields, and the more important journals 
of all types save the most popular story-papers, was 
granted to professors and students by college libraries. 
Nearly every one said, “No.” Several made mention 
of groups of special books bought at a professor’s 
request, that his students might all have access to them. 
Some referred to the fact that the public libraries of 


their respective cities gave this service that I spoke of. 


50480 


The actual state of affairs, the failtre of the college 
library to do its obvious and hel piu ent work in keeping 
the richest and most thought-pro woking literature easily 
available for home reading {0 all, students and faculty 
—this was best shown by ¢he answers to question 
number one which was; ‘Does your library subscribe to 
extra copies of periodicals of any kind, and lend these 
copies to professors and students?” Of the forty-six 
answers, thirty-eight were flat negatives. Of the 
affirmatives, one was from a departmental library ; one 
from a library just opened and perhaps unfamiliar 
with the bad habit in question; and six qualified their 
statements by such phrases as “a few” and “to a 
limited extent.” From other sources I learn that it 
is most unusual for college libraries to subscribe to 
more than one copy of any periodical. This means 
that in, say, fifty of our larger colleges and universities 
having a iotal of about 130,000 students and 10,000 
professors and instructors, the libraries furnish a total 
of fifty copies of such journals as the Yale Review, 
the Nineteenth Century, Science, Progress, Revue des 
deux Mondes, Nature and Science—to name only a 
few at random. 

The answers to question number three confirm the 
conclusions to which the answers to number one inevi- 
tably lead. This question was, “How many extra copies 
of books of any kind does your library buy and lend to 
professors and students?” The answers, when read in 

the light of the other ‘answers, show . 


of the forty-six colleges do the lib 
ble- mi and inviti 


subjects of discussion the catty over. For ee ie 
in a college or university of two or three thousand 
students, with a hundred or more professors, a single 
copy of each of such books as Bertrand Russell’s “The 
Problem of China,” Lippmann’s “Public Opinion,” 
Reinsch’s “Secret Diplomacy,” Kendrew’s “Climates 
of the Continents,” and Caullery’s “Universities and 


lainly that i in | 


LN QA 


Scientific Life in the United States,’ must fill all 
demands. Nearly every librarian who answered 
my questions says he would gladly have the library in © 
his charge render the services I have indicated, but § 
that lack of funds forbids. The blame, then, falls back — 
upon trustees and in good measure on faculties. 

There is the gist of the reasons for saying that 
college libraries are neglected! No answer is needed 
to the suggestions that professors and students can 
buy books for themselves, and that students in college sities 
ought not to be encouraged to read outside the closed ia 
boundaries of their studies. To him who makes i 
seriously such suggestions, any argument would be amg 
useless. : 

A revision of the theory on which college libraries 
are managed to-day would lead to certain modifications 
in practice, such as cutting down the storage-cost — 
of many books, and the buying and preparing for the 
shelves of many expensive books for research, books — 
which to-day are not as important as they were even > 
yesterday, and can any day be seen, copied, or handled 
at less cost than the day before. 

Consider the laboratories of other kinds which are . 
being erected for the promotion of the more practical 
and business-like education! Surely, if college authori- 
ties and college teachers really believed what they say 
about the supreme importance of books, they would see 
to it that book-laboratories came before laboratories 

0 BS i physics and biology. Saleen ot ee uk 
of 0 rt and 1 1 go college. ; 


and taste permit, the best een is heme. writes on any 
subject, in book, journal or pamphlet—as well as all 
that older literature which the experienced and dis- 
cerning have pronounced good. College libraries are 
established, surely, to give to all students and profes- | 
sors this guidance, this inspiration, this hearty invita- | 
tion—and this is precisely what they do not do. 


